Class 
Book 



THE BEQUEST OF 

DANIEL MURRAY 

WASHINGTON. D. C. 
1925 




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"Whoever opens a school closes a prison." — Victor Hugo. 
Girth Congress. Ex. Doc. 

SENATE. 

1st Session. No 

PETITION. 

In the Senate oe the United States. 
January, 1916. 

To the Honorable 

The Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of 
America in Congress assembled : 

Petition oe Proe. William H. H. Hart, Principal oe the Hart 
Farm School and Junior Republic eor Dependent Children, 
216 Arthur Place N. W., Washington, D. C. 

The undersigned, your petitioner, begs leave to submit, for the con- 
sideration and adjustment by Congress, the following matters and 
things relative to the indebtedness of the United States to your peti- 
tioner for losses, costs and damages sustained and for services rendered 
by him in carrying out the provisions of sundry mandatory acts of 
Congress relative to the care and maintenance of dependent wards 
of the United States, and in that behalf, first, as to the need of the 
public service that brought the Hart Farm School and Junior Republic 
for Dependent Children into existence, on page 269 of the Report of 
the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the year 1897, says : 

"There are at least eight private institutions in the District of Columbia, 
which devote their resources exclusively to the care of white children" 

and on page 280 of the same report : 

* * * The Petition in full is in possession of the Committee on Appro- 
priations of the Senate and presents in order^ proper affidavits of proof of 
losses, costs, services and damages and the Acts of Congress and the interpreta- 
tion of the same under which they accrued. 

This Petition ought to be printed in "The Congressional Record," so that 
this whole matter may become available and open to general knowledge. 

On page 226 of the Hearing in the Senate appropriation committee, 
Wednesday, February 4, 1903, Mr. Mann, of the Board of Children's 
Guardians, says : 




"Probably no person is able to say that Prof. Hart has not lost money in 
maintaining the Hart Farm School and Junior Republic for Dependent Children ; 
in other words, that the school has not cost more than the receipts from the 
Board of Children's Guardians." 

And on page IT of the tenth report of the Board of Children's 
Guardians of the District of Columbia for the fiscal year ended June 
30 ; 1903, the board says: 

"The board desired not only to meet his legitimate expenditures, but to make 
allowance for his services and for profits on his undertaking." 

This was the plain understanding- with which Professor Hart began 

this public service by organizing and establishing the Hart Farm School 
and Junior Republic for Dependent Children. And under that admitted 
fact he claims that the Government is morally bound to repay all 
losses sustained by him in this public service, together with a fair 
profit on the enterprise and fair remuneration for his services, amount- 
ing in all, now, on March 8, 1916, due your petitioner, as a debt created 
by sundry mandatory acts of Congress, the sum of two hundred and 
thirty-eight thousand and twenty-four dollars and eight cents ($238,- 
024.08). 

That Congress has full power to pay this whole debt and that it is 
its duty so to do was indicated by the Supreme Court of the United 
States in the Sugar Bounty Cases, which grew out of the McKinley 
Law Statute of 1890 ; vide vol. IV, p. 870, American and English 
Encyclopedia of Law, Second Edition; and in U. S. vs. Realty Com- 
pany, 163 U. S. The Supreme Court gave as its reason for sustaining 
the act of March 2, 1895, chapter 189, 28th Statutes at Large, pages 
910, 933, that it is within the constitutional power of Congress to 
appropriate public money for the payment of claims upon the public 
Treasury, which are founded upon moral and equitable obligations, 
and upon the principle of Right and Justice, though the claims are not 
strictly legal. * * *. 

(Rest of Petition omitted except the few concluding pages giving the items 
of costs, losses, services and damages, and the amendment desired to settle the 
debt.) 

Not having received from the Congress the relief prayed through 
all these years, your petitioner on March 8, 1906, became a bankrupt 
and the bankrupt court took charge of all his remaining property with 

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The bequest of 
Daniel Murray, 
Washington, D. C. 
1925. 



which to pay the debts of your petitioner and the Hart School and 
Junior Republic for Dependent Children, on June 30/1906, ceased to 
exist after nine years' service and in the place of it the Government 
established the Colored Industrial Home School at Blue Plains in the 
District of Columbia to continue its work without making any settle- 
ment whatever with your petitioner for the losses and costs sustained, 
the damages suffered and the services rendered the Government dur- 
ing the nine years of the existence of the School. 

For the eighteen years since that date your petitioner has besought 
the Congress to pay him what is due him for his losses, costs, damages, 
and services — omitting any claim whatever for "reasonable profits on 
the undertaking" — and, though rendered a bankrupt in his old age 
after a long life of prudence, industry, thrift and economy by this 
protracted delay of relief from the Congress which your petitioner has 
delighted to serve, yet he has never despaired of ultimately receiving 
all that is due him, because Congress may be wrong some of the time 
it does not remain so all the time and finally the hour strikes for jus- 
tice and judgment where there has been faithful public service rend- 
ered zealously in response to the public need expressed in the form 
of mandatory laws. * 

And now, after haunting the corridors of the Capitol for eighteen 
long, weary, years, the best years of his life, your petitioner now hopes 
for speedy justice, in full measure, for all his losses, costs and damages 
sustained and all the services rendered upon the repeated mandatory 
acts of the Congress of the United States of America. 

The bankruptcy utterly annihiliated your petitioner and made sad 
wreckage of him and his institution and out of this week of a noble 
work for uplifting humanity your petitioner must now pick out the 
larger items of his losses, costs and damages for which, together with 
his services, recovery for his own use and behoof is prayed in this 
Petition. The creditors got what there was of the wreck, and the Gov- 
ernment owes them their balances, while your petitioner got nothing 
but discredit and disgrace, and a ruined life and poverty, in his old age, 
from it all. 

Loss of cash money in hand put in the school during the first three 
years to get it going, which was totally separate from and in addi- 
tional to any payments received from the government or any sup- 
plies or credits furnished by the merchants $6,971.83 

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The sum paid your petitioner for the year 1897-98 was only $1,444.53, 
which was not one-tenth of the cost of installing the institution ; the 
sum paid for the year 1898-99 was $6,068.10, which was not one-third 
of the costs of the operation of the School for that year. The sum 
paid for the year 1899-1900 was $8,444.53, and was also less than 
one-third the cost of the operation of the School for that year ; the 
sum paid for the year 1900-1901 was $10,446.58, considerably less than 
half the cost of the operation of the School for that year, and the same 
thing is true of the sum of $10,110.23, paid your petitioner the follow- 
ing year, and for the four remaining years that your petitioner con- 
ducted the School in response to the mandatory laws of Congress. 



Loss caused by government property clerk (Prof. Hart's affidavit in 

this Petition) $1,000.00 

Loss by breach of contract, 1901-2 (Prof. Hart's affidavit in this Peti- 
tion), and balance of $675 due under that contract $5,675.00 

Loss of barns by burning (Mr. Louis Hatton's affidavit in this 

Petition) $15,000.00 

Loss of storehouse by burnng (Mr. James M. Jackson's affidavit in 

this Petition) $2,400.00 

Loss of $8,258.60 wrongfully withheld by the government. See Sen. 

Doc. No. 24, 58th Cong., 2d Session $8,258.60 

Loss of money paid out of the earnings of your Petitioner as law 
professor for care, clothing and transportation of wards after they 
had ceased to be inmates of the Hart Farm School and Junior Re- 
public for Dependent Children upon the demand of the govern- 
ment (see p. 102 of this Petition) $6,145.00 

Compensation for services for nine years as Principal of the Hart 
Farm School and Junior Republic for Dependent Children at 
$4,000.00 per annum — the same salary paid to the superintendent of 
the public schools of the District of Columbia $36,000.00 

Schedule of losses which your petitioner sustained by bankruptcy 
in addition to the above enumerated- losses suffered prior to the 
bankruptcy 

Loss of advances made to your petitioner upon Endowment Life In- 
surance policies in the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New 
York and in the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company of Penn- 
sylvania $3,108.00 

Loss of four United States of America bonds due in 1907, deposited 
as collateral in the Columbia National Bank for loans to carry 

obligations incurred for the School $2,060.00 

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Loss of the residue of the property at the Hart Farm School and 
Junior Republic for Dependent Children sold at auction by the 
Bankruptcy Court for cash for the sum of $5,160.55 

Loss of the County' School property in Prince George's County, 
Mandand, by the sale of the fee-simple title by the Bankrupt 
Court $800.00 

Loss of Lot 43 and parts of Lot 44 in Square 442 in the City of 
Washington in the District of Columbia, consisting of a plot of 
ground 50x105 improved by a three-story brick dwelling house, 
the home, store, tenant house, residence and stable of your petitioner, 
sold by the Bankrupt Court for the sum of $10,485.97 

Loss of the Hart Farm property in the State of Maryland through 
the Bankrupt Proceedings $15,000.00 

The loss of the farm was the most cruel stroke of all the ill fortune. 
I had planted my orchards, set out my vineyards, every tree and vine 
with my own hands, and watched them tenderly until their boughs 
hung heavy with luscious fruit. 

Every inch of land had its use and charm, its vales and dells, its 
rolling meadows and uplands, its game reserves and fishing inlets, and 
ten miles away a vista of Washington, the City Beautiful, upon the 
tawny Potomac, mother of wealth to all who live upon her shores. 

I had set up my boundaries, ditched and drained and cleared and 
rolled it all until it had became my big garden, my Eden ! 

Its loss broke my heart and my spirit and caused a crack in my brain 
and destroyed my health. I have never recovered from it and never 
shall. 

The malevolence that wrought the ruin sent its poisoned shaft home 
to its mark and turned my paradise into a desert. 

The farm was as valuable as it was beautiful. It was adjacent to 
the Government Reservation of Fort Washington, where more than 
eight millions of dollars have recently been spent for improvements. 
Many years ago a few acres of my tract had been taken by the Gov- 
ernment at one hundred dollars an acre and the War Department had 
made surveys which would have taken the whole six hundred and 
forty acres as a target range. 

And its convenient location was another element of value. The 
Government built me a splendid roadway upon which I could speed a 
harness horse frorn the wharf — the finest on the Potomac — into my 



farm at its river entrance, and I had a river front also for the landing 
of scows with stores of fertilizing materials. 

To the harvests of our gardens and fields we added the harvests of 
our fishing shore and could drift with the tide to Washington in our 
boats and with the turning tide drift home again. 

It was just near enough to the great city to make us its neighbor and 
just distant enough to escape its noise and free and fever. Its real 
value was threefold what I have put down for its loss. Its prospective 
value will be tenfold greater and I have a baby boy, born in my fiftieth 
year, whom I would have planted on his feet there. 

Loss of policies in the Equitable Life Assurance Company and in the 

Pen Mutual Insurance Company $25,000.00 

Money due the Clementine N. Bartlett Estate for supplies furnished 
the School as fuel and as rent of which your petitioner is executor 
and beneficiary under her last will and testament $5,700.00 

Damages under the unanimous resolution of the United States Senate 
of April 26, 1904, from March 8, 1906, the date of the bankruptcy 
to March 8, 1916, on the sum of $148,765.05, calculated at the legal 
rate of interest on money due and unlawfully withheld — $89,- 
258.03 — making a total sum due March 8, 1916, and payable for 
costs, losses, damages and services $238,024.08 

Your petitioner now comes and prays the payment of this sum of 
two hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-four dollars and 
eight cents in the Deficiency Bill in the name of justice. In a great 
Republic founded upon the principle that each individual must make 
his own way in the world justice — suitm cuique tribnere — is the uni- 
versal first need of the whole body politic and of each of its social 
units. 

Without justice from his fellow citizens the life, liberty and fortune 
of no individual can be secured by his own recititude of character, 
industry and thrift, and without justice any citizen may at any moment 
be made the helpless victim of the Government — the supreme purpose 
of which is to establish and maintain justice for all the people. T.he 
need of justice is, therefore, the primal and essential need of society. 
Its importance transcends that of art, arms, education, religion . or 
economics, because it is the cement which holds society together and 
produces all the orderly processes of moral progress and power in 

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the social world just as the great law of gravitation does in the material 
universe. In the name of this justice, your petitioner comes to this 
Congress of the United States of America seeking what is his own 
from it for services rendered in its behalf and upon its mandatory 
orders repeated from year to year, and which, if your petitioner had 
disobeyed or negligently performed, would have subjected him to 
indictment and trial as a criminal. The moral law for a nation is in 
no wise different from that for an individual, except that for the nation 
it is more imperative in its obligation. 

The United States is an institution for the protection and safeguard- 
ing of the happiness of individual citizens. Says Milton : "A nation 
ought to be but as one large moral personage, one mighty growth or 
stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body, for 
look, what the ground and causes are of single happiness to one man, 
the same ye shall find them to be to a whole state." In addition to 
this $238,024.08 in money this Congress owes your petitioner the 
formal and solemn thanks of Congress for the signal, novel and neces- 
sary service to the country — humanity — and cause of education — 
rendered by him in the establishment and maintenance of the Hart 
Farm School and Junior Republic for Dependent Children, the essen- 
tial principles of which have been adopted by all the penal and refor- 
matory institutions in the District of Columbia. 

Wherefore, upon the premises stated, your petitioner prays that an 
amendment for his relief be incorporated in the Deficiency Bill which 
will secure him the payment of the sum of two hundred and thirty-eight 
thousand and twenty-four dollars and eight cents as reimbursement for 
his naked losses, costs and damages suffered, and as a compensation 
for his services rendered during nine years. 

Your petitioner begs to suggest that the amendment be drawn in 
such terms as will enable him to get the money himself, without the 
endless and wasteful litigation in the bankrupt court on account of his 
bankruptcy. He prays, therefore, that the amendment be drawn as 
follows : 

"For the relief of Professor William H. H. Hart, Principal of the Hart 
Farm School and Junior Republic for Dependent Children, the sum of two 
hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-four dollars and eight cents as 
payment in full for his costs, losses, damages and services in the care and 
maintenance of certain wards of the United States under sundry mandatory 

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Acts of Congress from November 11, 1897, to June 30, 1906, the same to be 
paid to the said Professor William H. H. Hart, Principal of the Hart Farm 
School and Junior Republic for Dependent Children, upon the approval of this 
Act for his own use and behoof as a gratuity." 

And to grant your petitioner such other and further relief in the 
premises as to justice and good conscience seemeth meet and proper and 
your petitioner will ever pray. 

WILLIAM H. H. HART, 
Principal of the Hart School and 
Junior Republic for Dependent Children. 

No. 216 Arthur Place, 

Washington, D. C. 



Printed at the 
Howard University 
Press, Washington, D. C. 



